Chapter 18

"What are you two planning together, aunt Medora?" Madame Olenska cried as she came into the room.

She was dressed as if for a ball. Everything about her shone with a soft light, as if her dress was woven out of candle-light. She carried her head high, like a pretty woman who means to win the room.

"We were saying that here is something beautiful to surprise you," Mrs. Manson answered. She rose and pointed playfully to the flowers.

Madame Olenska stopped and looked at the bouquet, a bunch of gift flowers. Her color did not change. White anger ran over her like summer lightning.

"Ah," she cried, in a high sharp voice that Archer had never heard from her. "Who is ridiculous enough to send me a bouquet? Why a bouquet? And why tonight of all nights?

"I'm not going to a ball. I'm not a girl just engaged to be married. But some people are always ridiculous."

Ridiculous meant fit only to be laughed at.

She turned back to the door, opened it, and called out, "Nastasia!"

The maid, who was always everywhere, appeared at once. Madame Olenska spoke to her in Italian. She spoke slowly, on purpose, so that Archer could follow it.

"Here, throw this out with the waste!" Then, as Nastasia stared, "But no, it's not the poor flowers' fault. Tell the boy to carry them three doors away."

"The house of Mr. Winsett, the dark gentleman who dined here. His wife is ill. They may give her pleasure...

"The boy is out, you say? Then, my dear one, run yourself. Here, put my cloak over you and fly. I want the thing out of the house at once! And whatever you do, don't say they came from me!"

She threw her velvet opera cloak over the maid's shoulders. Then she turned back into the drawing-room and shut the door sharply. Her breast rose and fell fast under its lace. For a moment Archer thought she was going to cry.

Instead she laughed. She looked from the Marchioness to Archer and asked, "And you two, have you made friends?"

"It's for Mr. Archer to say, darling. He has waited patiently while you dressed."

"Yes, I gave you time enough. My hair wouldn't go," Madame Olenska said. She touched her piled-up curls.

"But that reminds me. I see Dr. Carver is gone, and you'll be late at the Blenkers'. Mr. Archer, will you put my aunt in the carriage?"

She followed the Marchioness into the hall. She saw her packed into shawls, wraps, and shoe covers. From the doorstep she called, "The carriage must return for me at ten!"

Then she returned to the drawing-room. When Archer came in again, she was by the fireplace, studying herself in the glass.

New York society did not do things this way. A lady did not call her maid "my dear one." She did not send her into the night in her own opera cloak.

Despite his deeper feelings, Archer enjoyed it. In this world, feeling became action with the speed of the old gods.

Madame Olenska did not move when he came up behind her. For a second their eyes met in the glass. Then she turned, dropped into her sofa-corner, and breathed out, "There's time for a cigarette."

He handed her the box and lit a paper strip for her. The flame flashed up into her face. She looked at him with laughing eyes and said, "What do you think of me when I'm angry?"

Archer paused. Then he answered with sudden firmness, "It makes me understand what your aunt has been saying about you."

"I knew she was talking about me. Well?"

"She said you were used to all kinds of things. Wonders and pleasures and excitements that we could never hope to give you here."

Madame Olenska smiled faintly into the circle of smoke about her lips.

"Medora is romantic past all cure. It makes up to her for so many things!"

Archer paused again, and again took his risk. "Is your aunt's romance always close to the facts?"

"You mean, does she speak the truth?" Her niece considered. "Well, I'll tell you. In almost everything she says, there's something true and something untrue."

"But why do you ask? What has she been telling you?"

He looked away into the fire, and then back at her shining presence. His heart tightened at one thought. This was their last evening by that fireside. In a moment the carriage would come and carry her away.

"She claims Count Olenski asked her to persuade you to go back to him."

Madame Olenska made no answer. She sat still, her cigarette half-lifted. Her face did not change. Archer remembered that she rarely showed surprise.

"You knew, then?" he broke out.

She was silent so long that the ash dropped from her cigarette. She brushed it to the floor. "She has let fall some words about a letter. Poor darling! Medora and her little secrets —"

"Is it at your husband's wish that she arrived here so suddenly?"

Madame Olenska seemed to consider that question too. "There again, one can't tell. She told me Dr. Carver sent her a 'call of the spirit,' whatever that is."

"I'm afraid she's going to marry Dr. Carver... Poor Medora. There's always someone she wants to marry."

"But perhaps the people in Cuba simply grew tired of her! I think they paid her to live with them and keep them company. Really, I don't know why she came."

"But you do believe she has a letter from your husband?"

Again she thought in silence. Then she said, "After all, it was to be expected."

The young man rose and went to lean against the fireplace. A sudden restlessness took hold of him. His tongue would not obey him. Their minutes were counted. At any moment he might hear the wheels of the returning carriage.

"You know that your aunt believes you will go back?"

Madame Olenska raised her head. A deep red spread over her face, neck, and shoulders. She seldom blushed, and it hurt like a burn.

"Many cruel things have been believed of me," she said.

"Oh, Ellen, forgive me. I'm a fool, and I've been cruel!"

She smiled. "You are terribly nervous, and you have your own troubles. You think the Wellands are unreasonable about your marriage. I agree.

"In Europe, people don't understand our long American engagements. I suppose they are not as calm as we are." She said the word "we" with a light stress that made it sound like a quiet joke.

Archer felt the edge of the joke, but did not dare to take it up. Perhaps she turned the talk away from her own affairs on purpose. His last words clearly gave her pain. After that, all he could do was follow her lead.

But the hour was slipping away, and he could not bear it. He could not let a wall of words drop between them again.

"Yes," he said suddenly. "I went south to ask May to marry me after Easter. There's no reason why we shouldn't be married then."

"May loves you, yet you couldn't persuade her? I thought her too clever to obey such foolish old beliefs."

"She is too clever. She's not their prisoner."

Madame Olenska looked at him. "Well, then, I don't understand."

Archer's face grew hot, and he hurried on. "We had a frank talk, almost our first. She thinks my hurry a bad sign."

"Good heavens, a bad sign?"

"She thinks I can't trust myself to keep caring for her. She thinks I want marriage now to escape someone I care for more."

Madame Olenska studied this. "But if she thinks that, why isn't she in a hurry too?"

"Because she is nobler, greater in heart. She holds to the long engagement, to give me time..."

"Time to give her up for the other woman?"

"If I want to."

Madame Olenska leaned toward the fire and looked into it with fixed eyes. Down the quiet street, Archer heard the quick feet of her horses.

"That is noble," she said, with a slight break in her voice.

"Yes. But it's ridiculous."

"Ridiculous? Because you don't care for anyone else?"

"Because I don't mean to marry anyone else."

"Ah." After a long pause, she looked up. "Does this other woman love you?"

"Oh, there is no other woman. The person May was thinking of was never..."

"Then why, after all, are you in such a hurry?"

"There's your carriage," said Archer.

She half-rose and looked about her with empty eyes. Her fan and gloves lay on the sofa beside her. She picked them up without thinking.

"Yes, I suppose I must be going."

"You're going to Mrs. Struthers's?"

"Yes." She smiled and added, "I must go where I am invited, or I should be too lonely. Why not come with me?"

Archer felt that at any cost he must keep her beside him, and win the rest of her evening. He did not answer her question.

He stayed leaning against the fireplace. His eyes were fixed on the hand that held her gloves and fan. Did he have the power to make her drop them?

"May guessed the truth," he said. "There is another woman, but not the one she thinks."

Ellen Olenska made no answer and did not move. After a moment he sat down beside her. He took her hand and softly opened her fingers, so that the gloves and fan fell between them.

She sprang up, freed herself, and crossed the fireplace. "Ah, don't make love to me! Too many people have done that," she said darkly. Here, make love meant speak of love.

Archer changed color and stood up too. Nothing she said all evening cut him so deeply. "I have never made love to you," he said. "And I never shall. But you are the woman I would marry, if it were possible for either of us."

"Possible for either of us?" She looked at him in wonder. "You say that when you made it impossible?"

He stared at her. His mind was all blackness, and through it one blinding line of light tore its way.

"I made it impossible?"

"You, you, you!" she cried, her lip shaking like a child's near tears. "You made me give up the divorce. You showed me how selfish and evil it was."

"You said one must give up oneself to protect marriage. You said one must save one's family from public talk and scandal, an open shame."

"And my family was going to be your family. For May's sake, and for yours, I did what you told me. I did what you proved to me I ought to do."

"Ah," she said with a sudden laugh. "I've made no secret of it. I did it for you!"

She sank among the bright waves of her party dress. She looked like a masked dancer struck down at the ball. Archer stood by the fireplace and stared.

"Good God," he said, low, like a man in pain. "When I thought —"

"You thought?"

"Ah, don't ask me what I thought!"

He kept his eyes on her, and saw the same burning red climb her neck to her face. She sat up straight and faced him with a stiff, high pride.

"I do ask you."

"Well, then. There were things in that letter you asked me to read —"

"My husband's letter?"

"Yes."

"I had nothing to fear from that letter. Nothing at all! I only feared bringing shame and scandal on the family, on you and May."

"Good God," he said again, and hid his face in his hands.

The silence that followed lay on them with the weight of final things. No one could ever call them back. It seemed to press Archer down like the stone on his own grave.

In all the wide future he saw nothing that would ever lift that load from his heart. He did not move, and he did not raise his head from his hands. His hidden eyes went on staring into the dark.

"At least I loved you..." he said.

Then, from her sofa-corner, he heard a faint, held-back crying, like a child's. He started up and came to her side.

"Ellen! What madness! Why are you crying? Nothing is done that can't be undone. I'm still free, and you're going to be."

He had her in his arms. Her face was like a wet flower against his lips. All their empty fears dried up like ghosts at sunrise.

One thing filled him with wonder now. He stood there for five minutes, arguing with her across the room. And one touch of her made everything simple.

She gave him back all his kiss. But after a moment he felt her grow stiff in his arms. She put him aside and stood up.

"Ah, my poor Newland, I suppose this had to be. But it changes nothing," she said, looking down from the fireplace.

"It changes the whole of life for me."

"No, no, it mustn't. You're engaged to May Welland, and I'm married."

He stood up too, his face hot, his mind set. "Nonsense! It's too late for that sort of thing. We have no right to lie to other people or to ourselves."

"We won't talk of your marriage. But do you see me marrying May after this?"

She rested her thin elbows above the fireplace. The glass showed her face from the side. One loose curl hung on her neck. She looked worn and old.

"I don't see you," she said at last, "putting that question to May. Do you?"

He gave a wild little lift of his shoulders. "It's too late to do anything else."

"You say that because it is easy now, not because it is true. We can only do what we both decided."

"Ah, I don't understand you!"

She forced a sad smile that tightened her face. "You don't understand how you changed things for me, from before I knew all you did."

"All that I did?"

"Yes. At first I understood nothing. People here kept away from me. They thought I was a terrible woman."

"It seems they even refused to meet me at dinner. I found that out afterward."

"I learned how you made your mother go to the van der Luydens'. You announced your engagement at the Beaufort ball. You gave me two families instead of one..."

At that he broke into a laugh.

"Just imagine," she said, "how stupid and blind I was! I knew nothing of all this till Granny let it all out one day. To me, New York simply meant peace and freedom. It was coming home.

"I was so happy among my own people. Everyone I met seemed kind and good, and glad to see me.

"But from the beginning," she went on, "no one was as kind as you. No one gave reasons I understood for doing what seemed hard and unnecessary. The very good people didn't convince me. Nothing had ever pulled at them.

"But you knew. You understood. You felt the world outside pulling at you with all its hands of gold."

"And yet you hated what it asks in return. You hated happiness bought by broken faith, by cruel acts, by hearts that don't care."

"I never knew that before, and it's better than anything I've known."

She spoke in a low, even voice, without tears. Each word, as it dropped from her, fell into his breast like burning metal. He sat bowed over, his head between his hands. He stared at the carpet, and at the tip of the satin shoe under her dress.

Suddenly he went down on his knees and kissed the tip of that shoe.

She bent over him and laid her hands on his shoulders. Her eyes were so deep that he could not move under her look.

"Ah, don't let us undo what you have done!" she cried. "I can't go back now to that other way of thinking. I can't love you unless I give you up."

His arms reached up for her. But she drew away, and they stood facing each other, divided by the distance her words made. Then, all at once, his anger boiled over.

"And Beaufort? Is he to take my place?"

He was ready for an answering flash of anger. He would even welcome it, as fuel for his own. But Madame Olenska only grew a little paler. She stood with her arms hanging before her and her head a little bent. It was her way when she thought a question through.

"He's waiting for you now at Mrs. Struthers's. Why don't you go to him?" Archer said. His voice was bitter and unkind.

She turned to ring the bell. "I shall not go out this evening," she said when the maid came. "Tell the carriage to go and bring back the Signora Marchesa." The Italian words meant the lady Marchioness.

After the door closed again, Archer went on looking at her with bitter eyes. "Why this sacrifice? You tell me that you're lonely. Then I have no right to keep you from your friends."

She smiled a little, her eyes still wet. "I shall not be lonely now. I was lonely. I was afraid."

"But the emptiness and the darkness are gone. When I turn back into myself now, I am like a child at night. I go into a room where there is always a light."

Her tone and her look wrapped her in a soft distance that he could not cross. Archer broke out again, "I don't understand you!"

"Yet you understand May!"

His face grew red under the blow, but he kept his eyes on her. "May is ready to give me up."

"What! Three days after you begged her on your knees to hurry your marriage?"

"She refused. That gives me the right —"

"Ah, you've taught me what an ugly word that is," she said.

He turned away, tired through his whole body. He felt like a man who fought for hours up a steep rock face. Now, just as he reached the top, his hold broke. He was falling head first into the dark.

If he could take her in his arms again, he might sweep her reasons away. But something far away in her look and manner held him at a distance. So did his own sure sense that she meant every word. At last he began to beg again.

"If we do this now, it will be worse afterward, worse for everyone..."

"No, no, no!" she almost screamed, as if he frightened her.

At that moment the door bell rang, long and thin, through the house. They heard no carriage stop at the door. They stood still, looking at each other with frightened eyes.

Outside, Nastasia's step crossed the hall, and the outer door opened. A moment later she brought in a telegram and handed it to the Countess Olenska.

"The lady was happy at the flowers," Nastasia said. "She thought her signor marito, her honored husband, sent them. She cried and called it foolish."

Madame Olenska smiled and took the yellow envelope. She tore it open and carried it to the lamp. Then, when the door closed, she handed the telegram to Archer.

It came from St. Augustine, addressed to the Countess Olenska. In it he read:

"Granny's telegram worked. Papa and Mamma agree to the marriage after Easter. Am sending a telegram to Newland too. I am too happy for words, and I love you dearly. Your thankful May."

Half an hour later, Archer unlocked his own front door. On the hall table lay his pile of notes and letters. On top was an envelope of the same yellow kind. The message inside was also from May Welland, and it said:

"Parents agree. Wedding Tuesday after Easter, at twelve, Grace Church, eight bridesmaids. Please see the Rector. So happy. Love, May."

Bridesmaids are young women beside the bride. The Rector led the church.

Archer crushed the yellow sheet, as if that could destroy its news. He pulled out his diary, a small date book. With shaking fingers, he found nothing. He pushed the telegram into his pocket and went upstairs.

A light shone from Janey's little private room. Her brother knocked sharply, and the door opened. She wore her old purple dressing-gown, a loose night coat. Her hair was in pins, and her face looked worried.

"Newland! I hope there's no bad news in that telegram? I waited on purpose, in case —" No letter of his was ever safe from Janey.

He ignored her question. "What day is Easter this year?"

She looked shocked that any Christian could ask. "Easter? Newland! Of course, the first week in April. Why?"

"The first week?" He turned again to the pages of his diary, counting fast under his breath. "The first week, did you say?" He threw back his head with a long laugh.

"For pity's sake, what's the matter?"

"Nothing's the matter. Only that I'm going to be married in a month."

Janey threw her arms around his neck and pressed him to the purple wool of her dressing-gown. "Oh, Newland, how wonderful! I'm so glad! But dearest, why do you keep on laughing? Do hush, or you'll wake Mamma."